GDC 2005: Iwata Keynote Transcript

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Nintendo's president talks about joining the industry, DS, Revolution, Zelda, and wireless play. The full GDC transcript.

By Matt Casamassina

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata delivered his keynote speech Thursday morning at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company head talked in detail about his entry into the videogame industry, shared philosophies about game design, and spoke on the future of the industry. He also revealed several important details about the new Zelda, Nintendo DS, and the publisher's forthcoming Revolution console.

IGN has the full keynote transcript for readers below:

On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.

Today I'd like to speak to you from my heart about jobs and about our industry. I remember the first videogame I ever played. It was Pong - and I loved it! By the time I was in high school, I was the first person in my class to buy an early Hewlitt Packard Pocket Calculator. I think I was one of the original early adopters. But where most people used their calculators for higher mathematics, I used mine to program videogames. My first creation was a baseball game. I don't think anyone can say it had bad graphics because it had no graphics. Gameplay was represented only by numbers. But when I saw my friends playing that game and having fun, it made me feel proud. To me, this was a source of energy and passion. As that passion for games began to blossom, I think my life course was set.

In 1978 I entered the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I would have loved to study videogame programming, but nobody was teaching it then. So I went to classes on engineering and early computer science. But after class, when my friends went back to their rooms to study, I took off on my motorcycle for one retail store in Tokyo. This was the first store to have a department entirely dedicated to personal computers. That was my hangout - and I was not alone. There were others there who also looked at those early computers, and thought the same thing I did: how could we play games on them?

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata We became friends, formed a club, and soon rented an apartment in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, where we began designing our own games. We worked until midnight or later every night, and that group of friends is what became the company known as HAL today. The name came from the computer in the movie 2001: Space Odyssey. We thought that name was very cool. Also, this is what I looked like back then. [Points to picture of self, much younger, on a motorcycle] Like all game creators, I was extremely cool, too.

I don't really remember how, but I managed to keep up with my class work and graduated from the institute. When it came time to take a job, I had the distinction of joining the smallest company of any graduate in my class. I left to become only the fifth full-time employee of HAL and when I told my father this, you can image, it was not the happiest moment in the history of my family.

Iwata plays Nintendo DS Mario Kart People sometimes ask me what I did when I was hired at HAL. The answer is that I was a programmer. And an engineer. And a designer. And I marketed our games. I also ordered food. And I helped clean up. And, it was all great fun.

Perhaps the biggest moment in the history of HAL came when we heard the rumor that Nintendo was developing a machine capable of incredible new graphics: The Famicom, or NES, as it was called here in the States. We knew that this machine was for us. So we used every contact we could to get a meeting with Nintendo, sure that one of our ideas would become an instant hit. Yes, Nintendo did hire us, but not to amaze the world with one of our projects. Instead, they told us to fix on of their projects, a game that had fallen seriously behind schedule. Instead of creating a game, we repaired a game, and it was eventually release as NES Pinball. That experience taught us that even artists must know the business side of game development. After all, if a game never comes to market, there is very little chance of it making any money.

Working in those days was also instructive in another way. Because graphics were so primitive by today's standards, we asked ourselves how we could spur the players' imaginations as a substitute for what we couldn't display on the screen. Think about this: someday our games won't look any better. What will we do then?

Iwata, 20 years younger, poses for a picture on his motorcycle

Well, our work was satisfactory enough that we formed a close association with Nintendo. And as HAL invented a couple of early franchises, we also learned other lessons. Our first Kirby game taught us the value of teamwork. Since not everybody can be a Miyamoto, we discovered that ideas can come from several team members, building on each other, to make something superior to what one person could invent. Then we worked with the Famous Japanese creator Shigesato Itoi, who was already an avid gamer himself, to develop his first idea for a game. That series, called Mother in Japan and released in America as Earthbound, proved to us that ideas take on a special appeal when they become interactive.

Many years and many projects later I went to work for Nintendo full time, and then one day, about three years ago, Mr. Yamauchi appointed me to succeed him as company president. Of course, this was a great honor, but it was also a great challenge. I knew this would require committing much more time and assuming much more responsibility. But unfortunately, game developers are familiar with such things.

So I'd like to move on this morning and answer two questions that I'm often asked, now that I've had two decades of experience in the videogame world. First, over the last 20 years as a developer, what things have changed? And second, what things have stayed the same?

One thing that has not changed - and will not change - is our nature as a form of entertainment. Like any other entertainment medium, we must create an emotional response in order to succeed. Laughter, fear, joy, affection, surprise, and - most of all - accomplishment. In the end, triggering these feelings from our players is the true judgment of our work. This is the bottom line measurement of success.

Secondly, we must always weigh challenge and reward. How much work and frustration a player is willing to withstand depends on the personality and skill of the payer. Core gamers have a huge appetite for challenge and casual gamers want less difficulty. At Nintendo, we believe it is our responsibility to make games for all skill levels. And that includes people who are not playing our games now.

Revolution: backward compatible

The third thing that has not changes is the importance of the idea. Of course, it is valuable to devise an offshoot of a current idea. But it is invaluable to come up with a brand new idea of what a game can be. I'm sure there are a few of you out there in the audience today with such creativity, and our industry needs you!

Fourth - and this never changes - software sells hardware. People buy games to play the games they love. I agree with Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, when he says, "Software is the user experience. Software is the driving technology not just of computers, but of all consumer electronics."

Finally, what has not changes it the value of intellectual property. If it is true that software sells hardware, it is truer than ever that franchises sell software. While our industry has made hit games with names like Superman and James Bond and NFL Football, I think we should be proud that our best games are those whose heroes and world we invented ourselves.

So then, on the other side of the coin, what do I think of when I consider what has changed. One word immediately comes to mind: bigger! Especially here in the Western hemisphere, the business is bigger; the North American retail markets alone are worth approximately $17 billion dollars. In the US, game sales were up another 8% over last year. There are games in your living room, you office, on your PDA, your cell phone, and of course, best of all, on your Nintendo DS.